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PhotoIreland calls all photographers and artists critically engaged in image making, specifically those based in Ireland and those Irish artists developing their practice abroad, regardless of age and career stage, to submit their recent and ongoing projects to the fourth edition of New Irish Works.

New Irish Works is a unique artist support programme run since 2013 by PhotoIreland in 3-year cycles, generating a growing set of professional development opportunities for selected lens-based practitioners throughout the duration of each cycle. The call is open to Irish and Ireland-based artists and it seeks new work by artists at any stage of their career.

Throughout its history, New Irish Works has exhibited and showcased nationally across Dublin, Cork, and Limerick, and internationally from Paris, Amsterdam to Madrid, Ukraine, and beyond; it published and distributed a book featuring 25 artists in 2013, and a collection of 20 solo publications in 2016. The publications have sold worldwide and are now part of many private and public collections, including key cultural organisations such as the Hasselblad Foundation Library and the Centre Culturel Irlandais.

In addition, the New Irish Works project contributes to international pools of artists such as the Creative Europe Photography platform FUTURES — of which PhotoIreland is the only Irish member — providing further opportunities to Irish and Ireland-based artists in the international context.

For a balanced and transparent outcome, a jury is set in place to review the submissions and select a number of projects. The jury is strategically composed of national and international experts from a diversity of Art fields and with a variety of specialisations. A list of the selected projects will be announced on the 1st March 2022 and presented to the public at the thirteenth edition of PhotoIreland Festival. PhotoIreland plans further exhibitions and publications throughout the 2022-2024 period, to contribute to the development of specific opportunities based on the artists selected.

The image used to promote New Irish Works 2022 is from We Became Everything by George Voronov, a project presented during PhotoIreland Festival 2019 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland.

TIMELINE

The planned set of events is adaptable to future challenges but is described as:
30 January 2022
  — Submissions deadline
31 January-6 February 2022 — Processing and Send to Jury
7-20 February 2022 — Jury Period
21-27 February 2022 — Communication with Artists
1 March 2022 — New Irish Works artists announced
1-31 July 2022 — PhotoIreland Festival 2022 launch and group Installation at The Printworks
January-December 2023 — Solo Exhibitions
Autumn 2023 — New Irish Works Publication
January-December 2024 — Further opportunities to be announced

PROGRAMME

ARTISTS FEES, CONTRACTS, ENGAGEMENT

PhotoIreland treats all individuals it engages with as professionals, as described in our publicly available Payments Policy, discussing openly and with clarity, and before any commitments are agreed, the extent of the engagement sought and the conditions involved, from production and marketing budgets to other issues that may arise such as ownership of work and copyrights. In this way, we always offer artists a very clear and concise contract that states the work expected, conditions, fees, and timeline.

In addition, New Irish Works provides:

  • An artist fee of €400 for participation in the group installation in July for PhotoIreland Festival 2022
  • An artist fee of €1000 for a solo exhibition in The Library Project
  • A series of Professional Development sessions and consultancy services throughout the three year period.

It is worth considering that:

  • The annual nomination of Irish artists for the Creative Europe platform FUTURES will include New Irish Works artists.
  • The outcome and documentation of the project, including images of your work, will be archived in the long-term at newirishworks.com
  • PhotoIreland contributes with all its physical and digital materials to The National Irish Visual Arts Library who archives, stores, and makes these available for future research.
  • The duration of this 3-years period allows us to explore and generate further opportunities adapting to the artists needs, beyond what is planned.
  • As our organisation grows and our networks expands, new opportunities for development may materialise.

We consider our engagement with the selected artists to be a mid to long-term working relationship, not a one-off event, and the consideration of this project as such will be even more beneficial for the artists involved.

JURY

The jury members are: Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger, Bindi Vora, Cale Garrido, Elias Redstone, István Virágvölgyi,  João Linneu & Myrto Steirou, Kate Strain, Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, Natasha Christia, Rein Deslé.

PhotoIreland is providing a fee of €200 to each jury member for the contractual work expected in reviewing submissions, selecting a number of artists according to the remit of New Irish Works described in this page.

Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger, PhD, currently works both as the Chief Curator of Exhibitions at the Finnish Museum of Photography and as Professor of Exhibition Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki. She is responsible for the MA-program for curatorial and exhibition studies, Praxis, too. She also is an artistic director and co-founder of The Festival of Political Photography, which seeks to examine what the term ”political” means in contemporary extended photographic practices.

Rastenberger has extensive experience in exhibition projects, curatorial practices, and the international exhibition scene of the contemporary arts. She co-edited a book Why Exhibit? Positions On Exhibiting Photographies, 2018, FW:books and works on the second volume dealing with photo curation. Her special interests are new forms of photography as contemporary art, exhibition as critical practice, feminist curation and running.

Bindi VoraBindi Vora is an artist, curator and Curatorial Project Manager at Autograph, London. She recently curated Poulomi Basu: Centralia for Rencontres d’Arles – Louis Roederer Discovery Award (2020).

Since joining Autograph, Vora has co-curated solo exhibitions including Lola Flash: [sur]passing (2019) and Maxine Walker: Untitled (2019), is curating Poulomi Basu: Fireflies (2022) and contributed to a series of in-conversations with multidisciplinary artists including Mónica Alcázar-Duarte, Maryam Wahid and Tobi Alexandra Falade. She has written for publications such as the British Journal of Photography, FOAM and Loose Associations, and participated in public programmes at London Art Fair, GRAIN Photo Hub and The Photographers’ Gallery, amongst others.

Portrait by Laura Hensser

Cale GarridoCale Garrido is a Spanish independent journalist, photo editor, and curator based in Hamburg, Germany. She works on documentary and artistic photography projects, exhibitions, and publications. After her Journalism studies, she self-published two photobooks with documentary photographer Philipp Meuser: ‘Kadosh’ (2015) and ‘Neorrurales’ (2018), focussing on the politics of housing and demographics in different contexts. Since 2016, she has worked as a photo editor for Greenpeace-related publications in Germany. This experience has fostered a lasting interest in environmentally engaging photographic and artistic projects and brought her to curate group shows like ‘Urgent Arts of Living’ (Kaunas Photography Gallery, 2019) and ‘What if the Earth becomes Uninhabitable’ (with co-curator Peter Lindhorst, PHmuseum, 2020). As a member of the artists’ collective APPARAT, founded in Berlin in 2017, she curated the group exhibition ‘Die Anderen sind Wir. Bilder einer dissonanten Gesellschaft’ (Brandenburgischen Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst in Cottbus, 2019). Cale collaborates regularly with Kaunas Photography Gallery and is co-editor of the publications ‘Joan Fontcuberta: Crisis of History’ (Co-curator Alison Nordström, 2020) and ‘Women’s Workshop’ (Upcoming, 2022). In 2020 she has joined the curatorial team at the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2022 under the artistic direction of Koyo Kouoh and with fellow curators Rasha Salti, Oluremi C. Onabanjo, and Gabriella Beckhurst Feijoo.

Portrait by Paula Markert

Elias RedstoneElias Redstone is the founder of Photo Australia and Artistic Director of PHOTO International Festival of Photography (photo.org.au), a biennial of new photography, art and ideas in Melbourne delivered in collaboration with over 50 museums, galleries, universities and government partners. The first edition, PHOTO 2021, responded to the theme ‘The Truth’ and featured over 160 artists including Zanele Muholi, Hoda Afshar, Sam Contis, Brook Andrew, Kenta Cobayashi and Daniel Shea, amongst others. PHOTO 2022 will take place 29 April – 22 May 2022.

Exhibitions as an independent curator include Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age (Barbican Art Gallery, 2014) and the international touring exhibition Archizines (2011–2015) which was exhibited in 34 cities around the world. Previously he was Curator of the Polish Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Biennale and Senior Curator at the Architecture Foundation, London.

He has delivered projects in partnership with international museums and cultural institutions including MoMA, Tate Modern, Storefront for Art and Architecture and the British Council. He is a nominator for international photography awards including Prix Pictet, C/O Berlin’s Talent Award and the British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch.

He is Wallpaper’s Australia Editor, has acted as a contributing editor for Arena Homme Plus and GQ Style, and has edited publications for PHOTO Editions, Prestel, Sternberg Press and Bedford Press. His book Shooting Space: Architecture in Contemporary Photography is published by Phaidon.

Portrait by Hoda Afshar

István VirágvölgyiIstvan Viragvolgyi studied freehand drawing, desktop publishing, photography and earned a master’s degree from library and information studies at Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary).

He worked at the leading Hungarian news portal Origo first as photo editor and then as head of photography between 2007 and 2011. Then he joined MTI Hungarian News Agency and served as head of the photo desk for three years. He lectured about documentary photography and photo editing at the Budapest Metropolitan University between 2014 and 2019. Since 2014 he works as curator of the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center and he is the secretary of the Capa Grand Prize Hungary.

Since 2016 he is cultural advisor of the Archabbey of Pannonhalma, since 2018 volunteer editor of the Fortepan digital photo archive, and since 2021 member of the board of trustees of the József Pécsi Photography Scholarship for young artists. He is married, has two children, lives and works in Budapest.

Portrait by Balazs Mohai

Void is an independent publishing house dedicated to photography books and education. The project is driven by its founders Myrto Steirou and João Linneu.

Greek-born, based in Athens, Myrto Steirou (1989) graduated in International Relations and holds an MSc in Middle East Politics from School of Oriental and African Studies. From 2013–2016, to continue her research on Turkish Politics using photography, she attended a series of photography courses and seminars in Athens and Paris. She has worked on her personal photography projects and as a freelance photographer in different fields such as theater, news, and fashion. In 2016, she co-founded Void where she acts as an editor and project manager. In 2019 she also co-founded Carnivora, an imprint that specializes in Hispanic noir literature.

Brazilian born, based in Reykjavík, João Linneu (1978) is the co-founder of Void, an independent publishing house focused on photography books, established in 2016. Graduated in Communication, he worked for more than 20 years as Art Director, Head of Art and Creative Director in several advertising agencies in São Paulo and London. He received prestigious advertising and design awards such as the D&AD, Cannes Lions, One Show and Clio.

Kate Strain Kate Strain is a curator of contemporary art. From 2016–2021 she was artistic director of Grazer Kunstverein, Austria, where she curated projects by Aimée Zito Lema and Becket MWN, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Bianca Baldi, Alma Heikkilä, Emma Wolf-Haugh, Tai Shani, Edward Clydesdale Thomson, Riccardo Giacconi, Sylvia Schedelbauer, Triple Candie, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Carl Johan Högberg, Niamh O’Malley, Cesare Pietroiusti, Nadia Belerique, Christian Nyampeta, Anne Tallentire, Dennis McNulty, Mehraneh Atashi, Angelika Loderer, Ola Vasiljeva, Isabel Nolan, and Emily Mast, among others. In close collaboration with artist Fiona Hallinan, Strain is co-founder of the Department of Ultimology, a research body dedicated to the study of that which is dead or dying. The department is part of the Orthogonal Methods Group (OMG), based at CONNECT – the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications, headquartered at Trinity College Dublin. Working alongside Rachael Gilbourne, Strain makes up one half of the paired curatorial practice RGKSKSRG. Throughout 2019 RGKSKSRG produced a series of extended filmic studio visits with artists Bea McMahon, Eithne Jordan, Vivienne Dick, and Christopher Mahon. Strain lives in Wicklow, Ireland, where she is currently establishing the institutional framework for Kunstverein Aughrim, Ireland’s first art association based on the European model of the Kunstverein.

Portrait by Thomas Raggam

Kwasi Ohene AyehKwasi Ohene-Ayeh is a curator and critic based in Kumasi, Ghana.

He is a member of the Exit Frame Collective who are, besides artistic and curatorial projects, intervening in the intellectual infrastructure of professional art practice in Ghana by initiating the annual 12-day peer-to-peer intensive professional development program, ‘CritLab’, in partnership with Foundation for Contemporary Art – Ghana, blaxTARLINES KUMASI and Savanna Center for Contemporary Art, Tamale.

Ohene-Ayeh is co-curator of Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace (A Retrospective of Agyeman Ossei ‘Dota’) in Tamale, Ghana (2020-2021). He also co-curated the 12th edition of Bamako Encounters: Biennale of African Photography themed Streams of Consciousness: A Concatenation of Dividuals in Mali (2019-2020). He received the ACASA Award for Curatorial Excellence in 2021. Ohene-Ayeh is one of the Artistic Advisors for the 59th Venice Biennale (International Art Exhibition in 2022), under the artistic direction of the Curator Cecilia Alemani.

He is a lecturer at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi.

Natasha ChristiaNatasha Christia (Athens, 1976) is an unaffiliated curator, writer and educator based in Barcelona. She holds a BA in archaeology and art history from the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, an MA in modern art and film from the University of Essex and a postgraduate diploma in publishing from the University of Barcelona.

Her research focuses on the exploration and reinvention of dominant narratives through a novel reading of archival collections, the intersection of photography, film and the photobook and the dialogue between 20th century avant-garde photography and contemporary forms of expression often labelled as post-photography.

Christia was the artistic director of the fourth edition of DocField Documentary Photography Festival 2016, which was launched under the theme of Europe: Lost in Translation. She has curated various exhibitions, among them, AMORE: An Unfinished Trilogy by Valentina Abenavoli (Void/Athens Photo Festival, 2017), Dragana Jurišić: My Own Unknown (Centre Culturel Irlandais, Photo Sant Germain, 2017), Reversiones (Centro de la Imagen, Mexico DF, 2017), Lukas Birk: Travelogue Sammlung (Galerie Lustenau, Austria 2018) and You Are What You Eat (Krakow Photomonth 2019).

She regularly contributes essays on photography criticism for international publications and for artists. In 2019, she edited with Lukas Birk (Fraglich Publishing) on Gülistan (winner of the PHotoEspaña Best Photobook Award 2019, International Category).

Rein DesléRein Deslé has been working as a curator at FOMU (Photo Museum of Antwerp) since 2010.

She has curated several thematical exhibitions including Claude Samuel Zanele (2018), Show Us the Money (2016), Shooting Range (2014), You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet (2013) and Rebel Lives (2019) and solo shows for Max Pinckers, Mathieu Asselin, Saul Leiter, Camille Picquot, Harry Gruyaert, Sébastien Reuzé and Jan Hoek, among many others.

She is the founder of the platform for emerging Belgian talent .tiff (since 2012) and helped establish Trigger, an online and printed magazine. She is frequently asked as a jury member for (inter) national photography masters, grants and awards.

HOW TO APPLY

New Irish Works is not a competition, it does not offer cash prizes, but treats the artist as a professional worker, paying them for their work. It offers professional development beyond exposure, and there is no fee for participation. Submissions are free and open to practitioners at any stage of their career, specifically to all Irish artists -whether living in Ireland or abroad- and to all artists based on the island of Ireland.

You can submit your work by emailing pif.submissions@gmail.com, with the following:

  1. Completed Application form
  2. Images or other relevant materials of the proposed project must be sent via WeTransfer, Dropbox, or similar. Images must adhere to the image requirements outlined in the form. They will otherwise not be processed.

You will receive a confirmation email once your submission has been checked and processed. If you have not received one within 7 days, please get in touch.

TERMS

  • Please, read the requirements well ahead of submission time, so if you have any questions, you give us the chance to address them in a timely manner. Late submissions will not be considered due to technical or other issues if they were not addressed ahead of time.
  • Submissions deviating from the requested process are not considered and we will not engage in a conversation to correct submissions. It is up to you as a professional to make sure you read the requirements and follow them and that includes deadlines.
  • Artists who have been selected before are welcome to apply again because New Irish Works is project-focused. Thus, new projects are expected in such cases.

FAQs

Who can apply?
The New Irish Works call is for artists at any stage of their career and focuses on new work created in the last few years. It aims to represent the wealth and diversity of practices that constitute the contemporary Irish photographic community. It is aimed at what is understood as contemporary lens-based practices, whether you work with traditional photographic methods, digital photography, AI assisted work, interdisciplinary, etc.

How much does it cost to submit?
There is no cost for submissions.

Will artists be treated professionally? Will artists be offered a fee?
Always. PhotoIreland pays fees to all professionals it engages with as described in our Payments Policy. Furthermore, we draft a clear contract with all the key details including the work required, the fee offered, the timeline of payments, etc. You will be offered a fee for any use of your work as agreed in the contract.

How many images should I submit and what are the technical requirements?
You should submit as many images as you want, according to the project at hand. In our experience, we believe that 20 images should be more than enough to understand a project, so we ask for a maximum of 20 images per project to be submitted. Conversely, there is no minimum number of images. All technical requirements are outlined in the application form and checked upon receipt of submission, so we ask all applicants to adhere to these, as otherwise you will be asked to re-submit the images.

My project is in progress, can I submit it anyway?
Yes, if the project is substantially developed conceptually and you believe it is ready to be presented to the jury.

I want to submit more than one project, do I have to send separate submission forms?
Yes, separate projects will be considered as separate submissions. Please note, it is one form per project.

Will you communicate results with all artists?
Yes, we always maintain clear communications with artists. The results will be emailed on the specified dates to all who have submitted. There is no need to follow up — everyone will be contacted.

What are PhotoIreland and the jury looking for?
New Irish Works aims to evidence the existing diversity of practices in contemporary Irish arts. We are interested in works and practices that are critically engaged with the topics they present. This means the projects must be relevant and consistent, and not random selections of images from archives. The overall practice and history of the practitioner are also considered; we would like to see that the practitioners, no matter what stage they are at, are serious and committed to their practice.

It would always be helpful for the submitter to review and research the previous New Irish Works to understand more about the opportunities presented and the types of work previously selected.

Further queries can be emailed to pif.submissions@gmail.com